1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, an information processing program, and an information processing system, and more particularly, to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, an information processing program, and an information processing system, capable of allowing a user to easily save a content.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a wide variety of broadcast services have become available. A specific example is a broadcast service of providing contents such as television program contents using terrestrial analog broadcasting, terrestrial digital broadcasting, satellite broadcasting using a BS (Broadcasting Satellite) or a CS (Communication Satellite), CATV (Community Antenna Television) broadcasting using a cable, or IPTV broadcasting via the Internet using IP (Internet Protocol).
To receive such a wide variety of broadcast services, various types of apparatus adapted to receive (acquire) contents are available. Some apparatus capable of not only receiving and storing (recording) a television program in accordance with a command issued by a user but also capable of recoding all receivable programs so that a user is allowed to view a desired program at a desired time without having to perform a particular recording operation. This type of apparatus is known as a home server. There is also available a portable terminal apparatus such as a portable telephone device or a notebook type personal computer having the capability of receiving television broadcasting at an outdoor location.
A typical one of various kinds of broadcast services is a terrestrial digital broadcasting service performed using 12 segments of a total of 13 segments of a 6 MHz broadcasting band (hereinafter, referred to simply as a full-segment broadcast service (note that “full-segment” is herein used to express such a type of broadcasting service although not all 13 segments are used but only 12 segments of the total of 13 segments are actually used)) and another typical broadcast service is a terrestrial digital broadcasting service performed using remaining one segment of the total of 13 segments to provide video/audio data or other data to portable telephone devices or mobile terminal devices (hereinafter, referred to simply as a one-segment broadcast service). In many cases, a television program provided by full-segment broadcasting is also provided at the same time by one-segment broadcasting. That is, the same television program content is broadcast in both formats according to the same schedule. However, full-segment programs are broadcast with a resolution of 1920×1080, while one-segment programs are broadcast with a resolution of 320×240. One-segment programs are broadcast at a lower transmission rate than full-segment programs so that portable terminal apparatuses can receive them.
In general, portable terminal apparatuses designed to receive a one-segment television signal have a lower display resolution and have a lower storage capacity because of limitations on size and power consumption, than apparatuses designed to be used in a house to receive a full-segment broadcast signal. Besides, in many cases, portable terminal apparatuses are used in unstable receiving circumstances. Thus, television program data recorded on a portable terminal apparatus is generally worse in quality than those recorded on an in-house apparatus. Therefore, in order to retain recorded television programs for a long time to enjoy viewing them many times, it is more desirable to record programs in a high-quality state, and it is undesirable to record programs on a portable terminal apparatus having poor recording performance that does not allow a long program to be recorded with high quality.
One technique to avoid the above problem is to record a full-segment program on an in-house high-performance apparatus (a home server) and transfer recorded data from it to a portable terminal apparatus. In this case, when high-resolution program data recorded on the home server is sent to the portable terminal apparatus, the high-resolution program data is converted into low-resolution program data because the portable terminal apparatus is capable of handling only low-resolution program data (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-101093 or Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-357035).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-101093 discloses a technique to convert a program data recorded in a recording apparatus into a form compressed at a compression ratio α1 higher than a compression ratio α0 when the program data is transferred from the recording apparatus to a playback apparatus. In a technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-357035, if a video server receives a request issued by a portable information terminal apparatus, video server transfers video data recorded in a compressed form in a storage medium of the video server to the portable information terminal apparatus at a low transmission rate. The portable information terminal apparatus edits the received video data and returns the resultant edited video data to the video server.